Trying to Persevere Day 1...and MANGOS!

Today is my first day off (again) from running. I'm planning on taking at least a full week off, maybe even two. I worked out on my elliptical today for about 30 minutes. I wanted to go 40, but my knee started to hurt, so I stopped. During those 30 minutes, I pushed as hard as I could so that I could get my heart rate up, but it didn't seem to want to budge! (I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing!) Well, even though I was at a "conversational pace" nearly the whole time, my legs felt like jello when I got off! I didn't stop there though! After the ellliptical, I did a little Pilates. I got a new target toning Pilates DVD. It's by Denise Austin who can be slightly annoying at times, but the DVD itself is pretty cool because it has 6 or so different workouts for all different areas of the body (and 1 workout for full body) and you can totally customize your workout by choosing which ones you want to do through the menu, then the DVD will play only those. Cool! Anyway, I just the beginner's abs workout, and then the hips and the butt workout. All of those should help with my IT band problems.

Oh, and btw, in case you are wondering WTH an IT band even is, I think this image depicts it well... So anyhow, I think my IT band is getting much better. My left knee is really the only one that really hurts now, and even then, it's not as bad as it has been. Hopefully, it'll be gone soon.



So aside from that, I did have another positive result from this injury. Here's the short story: injured knees leads to time on the couch icing knees. That leads to increased tv watching, specifically, shows I would never normally watch. This leads to the Food Network and the discovery of (a) a cool show called Iron Chef America, and (b) the founding of two cool new recipes! First, Iron Chef...the best part of the show is the opening. It's a cooking show but they are so completely dramatic about it -- it's hilarious! My fave part though is when they reveal the secret ingredient. I could describe it, or you could just see for yourself...




MANGOS! HILARIOUS!

Okay, now onto the new recipes I found. I made scallops provencal with herbed rice. It was my first time cooking and eating scallops and they turned out AWESOME! Both things were super YUM and super easy to make too! I'll try to post the recipes, or at least link them tomorrow! (The website where I got the recipes is being fiesty right now! UPDATE: They are linked now!)